Tears flow in Canberra

Jenny Macklin spoke for barely a minute before her voice broke and she sat down to be comforted by her frontbench colleagues.

The hard politics of question time were on hold. Amid an hour of eloquent speeches and tears, Ms Macklin best summed up the shock of Tuesday night's Baghdad blast when she said: "This building was an easy target because the UN deliberately did not want to lock itself up in a fortified building. It is so unjust..."

Sergio de Mello, the UN envoy to Iraq killed in the blast, personified the sense of loss.

Labor's Kevin Rudd described him as "a friend of Australia and a friend of the world".

He was also a friend to Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who knew the Brazilian diplomat when he was UN administrator in East Timor.

His voice faltering, Mr Downer said: "There is a lot of controversy about the United Nations and what it can or cannot do in Iraq. But there was never any controversy about Sergio. Everybody believed this was a man who could do the job."